The Consumer Warning thread

No meat in the world without a preservative will last "weeks in the fridge"
 
All this speaking of luncheon meat reminds me of this.

 
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Apparently, I committed some sort of minor traffic infraction while I was driving a car rented from Hertz in Italy - quite possible since some of Bologna's Modena's traffic rules are incomprehensible. But why do the fuckers charge me ?42,70 just to forward my details to the Italian rozzers? <_<

I had already ended my "loyalty" (much too big a word) to them after they'd given me an absolute clunker in the North Carolinian winter. This one is another drop in the bucket... the final one, I think.
 
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Hertz doughnut? :drums:





:tumbleweed: I will show myself out...
 
How bad has Sears gotten under K-Mart ownership? How wretched are they now? Well, they're selling old rusty shit on the shelf as new with a full new price. And now they say the unconditional guarantee on these things doesn't cover rust.

 
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How bad has Sears gotten under K-Mart ownership? How wretched are they now? Well, they're selling old rusty shit on the shelf as new with a full new price. And now they say the unconditional guarantee on these things doesn't cover rust.


Wow. Then again, you know things are bad when you have to make fun of yourself by highlighting a unlucky (for them) phenomenon that most Americans actually do when they go to the mall:

[video=youtube;xLmu98-wkmk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmu98-wkmk[/video]

To the international FG'rs, this ad is 50% accurate: Yeah, we do park at Sears (and K-Mart when it's at a mall) because the lot is nearly empty ...while most others are full.

However, most people just walk straight through without buying any of their shit. :lol:
 
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Wow. Then again, you know things are bad when you have to make fun of yourself by highlighting a unlucky (for them) phenomenon that most Americans actually do when they go to the mall:

[video=youtube;xLmu98-wkmk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLmu98-wkmk[/video]

To the international FG'rs, this ad is 50% accurate: Yeah, we do park at Sears (and K-Mart when it's at a mall) because the lot is nearly empty ...while most others are full.

However, most people just walk straight through without buying any of their shit. :lol:

Their merchandise problem is that they went from good products at decent prices to hopelessly outdated and/or obviously cheaply and crappily made merchandise... at the same prices.

Men went to Sears (in general) to buy tools, appliances (only because they had to) and maybe auto service/accessories - like tires, an oil change, a battery or (one of my favorite products of theirs) a battery charger. They might buy some boots or a couple of articles of clothing since they happened to be there, but the aforementioned categories are what drew men in. Those are also where Sears has cheapened out and crapped out the fastest. Especially notable in stores that used to have extensive tool offerings; now the space for those has been reduced drastically to make way for things like shitty exercise machines that break when a small child sits on them. Things nobody wants are increasingly seen at Sears and the items that brought people in in the first place are vanishing.

I have been told that the things women would go in for are clothes, furnishings, decorating material and such. I have also been told by women that Sears' conduct over in those departments is pretty similar to what they did in the tools, appliances and auto areas. So they've basically managed to run off all their customers through stupidity and bad marketing.

The irony is that Sears' website and online ordering experience is often abysmally bad - when they were the company that perfected mail order in the first place along with JC Penney's and Montgomery Wards'. They still haven't figured that out, either.
 
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Pretty much. Personally, the clothes are still pretty outdated...and I'm not exactly a arbiter of style or taste.

Sears is seen as the store your grandma goes to. It doesn't help that a lot of the stores are dingy either, especially K-Mart.

Those feel like a weird ghost town : there's barely any people in the store, random shit placed hap-hazardly like 2 or 3 fridges next to mattresses next to a Craftsman tractor, next to a nearly cleaned out shitty electronics section, next to a Dyson vacuum that next to no one who shops at k-mart these days will buy.

the staff look bored to the point of tears and seem surprised to see anyone walk through the doors...I can't blame them.

I've only bought 3 things at Sears, all of them car related.

Consumerist says it best:

"We?ve had a longtime joke here at Consumerist that Sears Holdings isn?t actually a retail company, but an advanced anti-capitalist prank pretending to run a retail company."

A co-workers wife tried the new "we bring it to your car" feature at Sears online pickup. Let's just say it didn't go well. At all.

Edit: Why shouldn't t you use chrome sockets on impact tools like the warning labels say?
 
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Edit: Why shouldn't t you use chrome sockets on impact tools like the warning labels say?

The sockets intended for use with hand tools and electric ratchets are thin-wall. They're not intended to take the hammering stress (which is both rotary and vertical in nature) meted out by an impact tool running at full throttle. One of two things will happen. One, the socket will disintegrate or explode with the associated shrapnel flying at medium speed. Second, the socket may strip the head of the fastener when the socket fails. And over time you can actually damage or destroy the impact tool.

Ingersoll Rand has a good (if self-promoting) write-up: http://www.ingersollrandproducts.co...-of-using-impact-sockets-with-impact-wrenches - though they're a bit off on the material in the regular sockets. Impact sockets are made of chrome molybdenum, your standard socket is usually made from either chromed steel or chrome vanadium, not just chrome metal.

Or, put another way, while you may be able to get away with it once, or if you keep the throttle low, this is the least-worst thing that could happen when it fails:

10qjaki.jpg


Everything worse than this usually involves sharp, jagged tool steel flying at high velocities through the air and potentially into you.

You can also run into the same problem when you get into torques approaching 100lb-ft even with hand tools, like with a breaker bar. However, the failures usually aren't quite as... energetic... as they tend to be with impacts.
 
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Impact guns with non impact sockets are a great way to get a lump in the side of your head. Or break a good window, dent a fender, etc. etc..
 
Another warning on not so much a bad store, but one that should know better. The Fresh Market is selling eight-week old coffee at full price. I mistakenly bought a bag of Intelligentsia Black Cat Espresso from there and cannot get a decent shot out of it. This is the most stale and flavourless coffee water I've ever tasted. What makes it worse, is that Intelligentsia is known for some of the best coffee in the world and the idiots in these stores probably have no idea what they have. Such a shame to let these wonderful beans go to waste!
 
I've determined that I can no longer trust retailers to check dates. Just last night I bought marshmallows to make rice crispie treats...and the first bag I grabbed was expired by 7 months. The bread I almost bought was 12 days past it's "best by" date. The last time I bought a Mt. Dew, the first one I grabbed was 3 months past it's date.
 
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